thinkbroadband

Cornwall now has fibre products available to a third of properties
Tuesday 17 April 2012 13:40:59 by
Andrew Ferguson

Cornwall which announced its partnership with BT to bring superfast
broadband to the area in September 2010 has hit a key milestone in the projects
roll-out. The fibre products are now available to 95,000 Cornish homes and
businesses, which is one third of all the premises in the county.

Take-up of the services sits at around the 6,000 mark, and orders are being
received at a rate of 250 per week. If a similar pattern happens as did with
the original ADSL roll-outs, this demand should increase significantly once
coverage hits over half of the properties in the county.

"Superfast broadband is fantastic news for our business. It is saving the
business time and money and changing the way we live and work. This is a fast
growing and fast changing marketplace and now we have superfast broadband we
can really take advantage of all the opportunities to grow the business.

Customers often send us videos they have taken using our cameras and we upload
videos to YouTube and other social media. It used to take a couple of hours.
Now we can upload and download videos in a fraction of the time.

We are also able to use cloud computing for applications, such as backing up
our data on-line. Increasingly, we are exporting our products around the globe
and superfast broadband means we can make more use of video conferencing and
Skype to connect with our customers overseas and provide a more personal
customer service."

The eventual target of the project is to offer fibre based services to 80%
of properties, with wireless and satellite services covering the final 20%.
Cornwall has been used as a testbed for 4G and white space wireless services so
far, so even those areas that get a wireless service should receive a service
in excess of the speeds that current generation ADSL can provide.

Comments

Posted by
kunjar over 5 years ago
Cornwall of all places? Seriously? How many businesses are based there? Dish out fibre to an upcoming and vibrant city such as nottingham or derby. Bloody cornwall.

Posted by
andrew ( staff member)
over 5 years ago
Cornwall because the council there started on this project design/planning before 2010 announcement. In short other areas could be at this stage if they had wanted.

Also with its access to EU Objective One funding it has an advantage.

Posted by
Somerset over 5 years ago
kunjar - do Nottingham and Derby have VM?

Posted by
warweezil over 5 years ago
Hello Welsh Assembly Government... I realise that the M4 corridor encourages tunnel vision.. but much of the REAL West Wales would like more than 8 megs... Fibre is something that we are only likely to see in our diet...

If a mere county can have 33% of properties served by Fibre.. how come our devolved administration is still only talking about what they would like to do? or are they looking at how much more moeny they can throw around the M4 while the rest of Wales festers on below 8 megs?

Posted by
Enrico21 over 5 years ago
Warweezil - BT are believed to be the sole remaining bidder for the Wales NGA Broadband tender. No suprise there then.

Posted by
mrod over 5 years ago
Actually, this is a bit of spin. (I happen to have a friend who is in the know.)

The numbers being given are the number of subscribers connected to the enabled exchanges and NOT those able to be supplied by those exchanges. There are *VERY* few actual cabinets installed so far, and those only in the easiest and most economic areas.

Posted by
geo12 over 5 years ago
mrod-Superfast Broadband Cornwall have advised me that the figures used are for lines connected to enabled cabinets.

Superfast Cornwall wrote: "Hi George, it's "b": the number of lines that are connected to enabled cabinets. Exchanges obviously have a lot more lines connected to them, but we're only counting those in the parts of exchange areas that actually have coverage as yet. Hope that makes sense."

Posted by
rogerwedlake over 5 years ago
I am connected to an 'enabled exchange' I get 0.15mbs!!!

Enquiries to Superfast Broadband have got nowhere. They have no idea when or even if my cabinet is going to be connected. They are only doing the cabinets that are easy to do and the rest of us get vague promises of 'future' technologies. I happen to know that the reason they have not done our cabinet is that the duct is too small for the fibre. EU money could have been used to level the playing field in these situations. Perhaps they have not heard of the 'future technology' of digging up the road and laying a duct!!

Posted by
chilting over 5 years ago
Hang your head in shame West Sussex CC. You are still just talking about what might be possible and BT ain't interested at all. I am paying £60 per month for a bonded line just to get 1.8 Meg for my rural business. Peter from West Chiltington.

Posted by
clive4 over 5 years ago
Certainly in south Cornwall, everyone has been leafletted by BT 'Do you want superfast fibre? If enough people sign up now you'll get it. If not - you won't'. Seems simple enough.

Posted by
ryster over 5 years ago
The county of Cornwall which is 41st out of 47 counties in terms of population density gets a wide scale fibre rollout, yet medium to large towns elsewhere in the UK like my home town of Uttoxeter are not even on the plan?